BeerBorg

I'm not sure if this is the right spot for this topic. If not, can a modmin please move it to the appropriate spot?

I wonder what people think about cold conditioning. And about fermentation timing in general.

At the mr beer fans site, there was a suggestion to use the 2-2-2 approach to brewing. If I remember correctly, that was 2 weeks fermenting, 2 weeks carbonating and 2 weeks in the refrigerator cold conditioning.

At some point, that seemed to morph into a 3-4, with 3 weeks fermenting and 4 weeks carbonating at room temperature and a couple of days in the fridge.

I ferment in my basement, where the temperatures are fairly cool, so I'll often ferment for three weeks. But for most ales, a week or two is plenty of time to complete fermentation. So why go 3 weeks?

Unless there are extenuating circumstances, I don't think it should take more than two weeks to carbonate in the bottle. There are advantages to extended warm conditioning, especially if your fermentation was not done under ideal conditions.

Some off flavors can fade during warm conditioning, so there's some value there.

But I feel there's value in cold conditioning, as well.

I know the theory is that the yeast go to sleep at cooler temperatures, so there's no benefit in refrigerating a home brew longer than needed to get the CO2 in suspension.

For a long time, I held that view. Then one time, I had a flight cancelled. I had stuck beer in the fridge for 4 days, but it was there for two weeks instead. WOW. The difference was amazing. Since then, I have never taken a bottled home-brew out of the fridge unless it has been there for at least a week.

I'm curious what others have to say on this.

RE: Cold conditioning:

My experience, is that polyphenols, tannins, and certain types of esters seem to drop out with cold conditioning, that don't drop out warm. So that makes things like clean lagers even cleaner. Which is good for those. Also potentially good for American Pales, IPAs, German Ales, dark malty beers, and the like.

I don't like to do long cold conditioning for beers where I want all the esters to stick around like Belgians, Saisons, some kinds of English beers. Because some of those beers, the esters are really the flavor I want to preserve and if they drop out the beer ends up more phenol driven. Which may or may not be what I want. Not all the esters get lost, it seems to be specific. I don't know if they are esters that somehow bind to polyphenols or tannins, or what. I just know they do seem to diminish. So my fruity Belgian (stuff like apple, peach, pear, light citrus) is less fruity, or my nutty English beer is less nutty. That makes me sad.

RE: Fermentation:

With my current pitch rates most of my beers are actually done fermenting in 3-5 days, 7 at the most and that's for 1.08-1.09+ beers. I tend to bottle 10-14 days in just because of timing, but I could bottle sooner. With my current pitch rates my beers are totally drinkable directly out of my fermenter if only they were carbonated. (my pitch rates are a hella lot, what this calculator https://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pit ... alculator/ calls "Pro Brewer 1.0" for most beers, "Pro Brewer 1.25" for big beers, "Pro Brewer 0.75" for beers that are < 1.05). But that said, I will drop down a notch from each if I want my beer to have a lot of banana or something that gets lost if you pitch that much. But so far mostly that seems to be banana.

I think with the old 2g packs of yeast that Mr. Beer used to provide, a much longer time in the fermenter helps clean up all the crap the stressed out yeast makes. Seriously at the pitch rates I currently use, 10g of dry yeast would be recommended for those batches, so they are still even 2x more then the 5g packs provided by Mr. Beer/Brew Demon.

Back to conditioning:

Also the S-33 that Mr. Beer used to provide and Brew Demon does today isn't a totally neutral yeast at warmer temps, nor is the Coopers yeast at warmer temps. So longer cold conditioning might drop some of the fruity esters out and make the beer seem cleaner. Both yeasts make drinkable beer at high temps which is why they are used, but maybe not as clean as some might want. Cold conditioning helps that.

The only reason I warm condition my beers for 3 weeks at room temperature before sampling them is that I bottle them with priming sugar and I'm an acetaldehyde super taster, so I will pick up fermentation byproducts from the bottle conditioning easily. I haven't tested to see if my priming rates affect the cleanup from bottle conditioning, because I've never been in that much of a hurry to try one (deep pipeline). But I might try one of my NE IPAs at 2 weeks soon, so we will see.

Depending on what type of beer it is depends on if I chuck it in the fridge in the AM and drink in the PM or if I leave it in the fridge for a week or two or a month before consuming it.

Regardless, if I had kegs and the ability to force carb, I could drink pretty much anything I make 2-3 weeks after I pitch the yeast.

Thanks for the knowledge bomb Mashani. I was interested in the same subject.

Hi Darrick, Welcome! Thanks for reviving this thread. Mashani is a great guide, he has helped my brewing considerably.
I also find that my beers now finish in about a week, but I don't generally keg them until three weeks. I don't cold crash, three weeks gives them plenty of time to clear. I also don't like taking samples, which would require bringing the bucket up from the basement, opening it, and putting it back. I'd rather wait until I'm sure, take one sample, and package.
BPGreen also mentioned improvements with cold time. When I bottled, I found that a little more time in the fridge led to finer carbonation. Now that I keg, I find that some beers require more time in the kegerator to reach their peak. I have thought I would dump a rye pale on first taste, only to find that two weeks later it was very good. I am currently drinking a Belgian Pale that was decent after carbing, but is much improved a few weeks later. This may be because I am making other errors in brewing or fermenting that take longer to resolve. But in any case, many beers will improve with time, so I try not to give up on one before I need the keg, or a year has passed.